Sami Land Research Articles

Scrutinising commodity hype in imaginaries of the Swedish green steel transition

The technological push for hydrogen-based steel production has become a flagship project of the Swedish state for advancing its global environmental leadership and becoming the world's first fossil free welfare state. The new production process has the potential to drastically cut emissions in a heavy polluting industry. The plans also entail a drastic upscale in steel production, energy and iron ore consumption and risk increasing existing pressures on Indigenous Sami land, local communities, and biodiversity. This article sets out to investigate the frontier-making function of green steel imaginaries to contribute to debates on sacrificed spaces of extraction for green commodity demand. The article speaks to a call for a critical turn in sustainability transitions literature by introducing the concept of hype to scrutinise the material consequences of growth-based green transition imaginaries. This article builds on a narrative analysis of government, industry, and company actors’ visions of a green steel future. The analysis illustrates how sociotechnical imaginaries are constructed to enable particular industrial futures over other green transition pathways. We show that the sociotechnical imaginary of green steel, fuelled through hype, serves to advance the new commodity and growth of the industry while effectively cancelling out democratic nuance and non-extractive alternatives. The findings illustrate the importance of pluralising green imaginaries to ensure inclusive transition pathways and to nuance and discursively dismantle the hype of green transitions that fail to break with the growth paradigm.

Land Rights Under Cultural Autonomy

Abstract This article focuses on land rights as a key aspect of non-territorial (cultural) autonomy, using, as a case study, a comparative analysis of the experiences of Sami people in Finland, Norway and Sweden. First, the concept of cultural autonomy is clarified, taking into account current debates on the subject. Next, the relationship between culture, indigenous peoples and autonomy is examined; and also, indigenous peoples’ land rights are evaluated in light of their dependence on the environment and natural resources to protect their culture. Then, a case study is provided on Sami people with a comparative analysis of the situation in Norway, Finland and Sweden. Finally, the article discusses potential ways to promote Sami land rights under cultural autonomy in response to the challenges emerging in practice.

Sami Land Rights

Abstract The Indigenous Sami people traditionally live in what is now Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Russia. A crucial matter for Indigenous peoples, including the Sami living in Sweden, is that of the recognition of their land rights and access to their traditional lands. This article’s aim is to present and analyse recent case law developments in Sweden that relate to the recognition and protection of Sami land rights, specifically the Girjas and Talma cases, through legal-scientific and textual analyses and relevant legal literature. Both cases concern Sami reindeer herding rights in Sweden and the Swedish state as defendant. These cases raise complex legal issues and historical circumstances, demonstrating the need for the Swedish state to treat Sami land rights as equal to other civil rights in Swedish society, in line with international human rights law.

Familiar Places: A History of Place Attachment in a South Sami Community

In contrast to situations in most other countries, Indigenous land rights in Sweden are tied to a specific livelihood—reindeer husbandry. Consequently, Sami culture is intimately connected to it. Currently, Sami who are not involved in reindeer husbandry use genealogy and attachment to place to signal Sami belonging and claim Sami identity. This paper explores the relationship between Sami genealogy and attachment to place before the reindeer grazing laws of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. I show that within local Sami communities the land representing home was part of family history and identity while using historical archive material, narratives, and storytelling. State projects in the late 19th century challenged the links between family and land by confining Sami land title to reindeer husbandry, thereby constructing a notion of Sami as reindeer herders. The idea has restricted families and individuals from developing their culture and livelihoods as Sami. The construct continues to cause conflicts between Sami and between Sami and other members of local communities. Nevertheless, Sami today continue to evoke their connections to kinship and place, regardless of livelihood.

Claims-Based Co-management in Norway's Arctic? Examining Sami Land Governance as a Case of Treaty Federalism–ERRATUM

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Claims-Based Co-management in Norway's Arctic? Examining Sami Land Governance as a Case of Treaty Federalism

AbstractAround the world, Indigenous peoples seek increased control of traditional lands. In northern Canada, such control may be afforded by claims-based co-management regimes. Such regimes are a common, and sometimes celebrated, component of treaty federalism. In Norway, Europe's only Indigenous people, the Sami, now participate in a land-management regime: the Finnmark Estate (FeFo). We explore whether FeFo is, in effect, claims-based co-management and whether Sami thus enjoy the sort of guaranteed shared rule envisioned in treaty federalism. We compare FeFo to Canadian co-management in three dimensions: novelty, independence and Indigenous influence. We conclude FeFo is indeed claims-based co-management. But FeFo falls short of the treaty-federal ideal, for reasons possibly including bureaucratic capture, fragile legitimacy, conflicting interpretations of the Sami interest and conflicting views on the merits of shared rule.

Sápmi. Ziemia Samów a formowanie granic krajów północnej Europy

SÁPMI. THE SAMI LAND AND BOUNDARIES FORMATION OF NORTHERN EUROPESápmi is an area strongly connected with culture of the Sami people, the indigenous inhabitants of Northern Europe. Gradual formation of nation states – Russia and Scandinavian kingdoms – had negative impact on lifestyle of the Sami people. This impact had a significant influence on their mentality and modification of the genuine culture. The paper aims to study the main effects of boundaries formation of nation states for culture of the autochthons of Northern Europe.

Memory-Making in Kiruna - Representations of Colonial Pioneerism in the Transformation of a Scandinavian Mining Town

This article considers colonial rhetoric manifested in representations of early settlement in the mining town of Kiruna in northernmost Sweden. Kiruna was founded more than 100 years ago by the LKAB Company with its centre the prosperous mine on Sami land. Continued iron ore mining has made it necessary to relocate the town centre a few kilometres north-east of its original location to ensure the safety of the people. The ongoing process of the town’s transformation due to industrial expansion has given rise to the creation of a memorial park between the town and the mine, in which two historical photographs have been erected on huge concrete blocks. For the Swedish Sami, the indigenous people, the transformation means further exploitation of their reindeer grazing lands and forced adaption to industrial expansion. The historical photographs in the memorial park fit into narratives of colonial expansion and exploration that represent the town’s colonial past. Both pictures are connected to colonial, racialised and gendered space during the early days of industrial colonialism. The context has been set by discussions about what Kiruna “is”, and how it originated.
 My aim is to study the role of collective memory in mediating a colonial past, by exploring the representations that are connected to and evoked by these pictures. In this progressive transformation of the town, what do these photographic memorials represent in relation to space? What are the values made visible in these photographs? I also discuss the ways in which Kiruna’s history becomes manifested in the town’s transformation and the use of history in urban planning. I argue that, in addressing the colonial history of Kiruna, it is timely to reconsider how memories of a town are communicated into the future by references to the past. I also claim that memory, history, and remembrance and forgetting are represented in this process of history-making and that they intersect gender, class and ethnicity.

Native American Oral Evidence: Finding a New Hearsay Exception

The Federal Rules of Evidence’s hearsay rules unjustifiably exclude legitimate and trustworthy evidence that support many Native American legal claims. Native American communities traditionally were not literate and rarely recorded the treaties, contracts, and other legal instruments they drew up or honored in any kind of written format, oftentimes recording their histories and diplomatic events in other ways; take for example wampum belts used by the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, among others. While the U.S. legal system presupposes that evidence in written statements provides a greater assurance of accuracy and truth than oral statements, this is not always the case. Writing is as susceptible to forgery, revision, manipulation, and misinterpretation as oral knowledge. Traditional Native American accounts of past experiences and realities are not honored in the courtroom, which strips authority from the robust institutions Native Americans employ in order to pass down and collectively maintain their own bodies of knowledge. This is a serious problem in Native American jurisprudence today. This article compares the American legal system’s treatment of oral evidence and history with its treatment in the legal systems of Canada, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and Norway. Each of these legal systems has developed methodologies that enable it to admit oral evidence in ways that respect the unique circumstances that often characterize disputes arising between indigenous and non-indigenous people. Canada, for example, has broadened its rules of evidence to admit First Nation (Canadian Native American) oral histories and cultural knowledge at times, so that they may be evaluated on par with Eurocentric written evidence. The Inter-American Court similarly admits oral histories from indigenous parties, expert witnesses, and anthropological studies, if it finds them legitimately probative in the context of a legal dispute. Norway’s highest court, the Hoyesterett, critiqued its own historical treatment of legal disputes involving Sami land and cultural rights and began adopting Sami-centric approaches in its jurisprudence that reference Sami lifestyle and custom. Canadian, Inter-American, and Norwegian legal practices may have persuasive value in U.S. courts deciding how to approach cases involving Native American parties who seek to introduce knowledge and expertise that has not traditionally been admitted in state and federal court systems. Failure to accommodate these parties not only violates the trust doctrine that federal and state governments are responsible to uphold for their relationship with sovereign indigenous nations, but also perpetuate cycles of injustice Native Americans have endured for the last 400 years. In the spirit of increasing access to the courts and advocating for equal justice, U.S. jurisprudence should evolve to consider the evidentiary value of modes of knowledge that many indigenous societies historically developed and preserved to this day.

Forest Fire and Indigenous Sami Land Use: Place Names, Fire Dynamics, and Ecosystem Change in Northern Scandinavia

During the last two centuries, fire suppression has critically modified boreal ecosystems in northern Scandinavia and has undoubtedly affected indigenous Sami land use. We inventoried Sami toponyms referring to fire in a municipality located in Swedish Sápmi, and investigated their past and present meanings by analyzing Sami dictionaries and conducting semi-structured interviews with Sami reindeer herders. We use toponyms based on the Sami word ‘roavve’ - a lichen-rich pine-heath that has burned - as a description of past ecosystems to inventory understory and tree vegetation and date the last occurrence of fire in 15 ‘roavve’ places. The inventories showed that some ‘roaave’ places have developed a late succession vegetation type, reducing their suitability for reindeer grazing. We argue both that fire suppression strongly influences the ecological trajectory of these sites and that one must take into account ethnoecological considerations when using toponyms as ecological markers to fully understand their meanings and avoid misinterpretation.

Do voluntary corporate actions improve cumulative effects assessment? Mining companies’ performance on Sami lands

Cumulative effects assessment (CEA) remains an Achilles heel in the licensing of mining projects on indigenous lands globally, but especially in the European North. Yet, rather than legislating on indigenous rights and CEA failures, governments tend to rely on companies to mitigate cumulative impacts through new corporate social responsibility actions. This paper considers if these voluntary actions improve companies’ CEA performance and so provide grounds for indigenous communities and decision makers to trust the industry more. Findings are presented from a systematic review of corporate impact assessments for 56 mining concession permit applications on Sami lands in Sweden. We show how companies that adopt additional voluntary measures provide somewhat richer assessments. Overall, however, the performance remains poor also for ‘frontrunners’, with persistent lack of clarity on methods and limited analysis of consequences, social and cultural impacts and interactions with other (past, present or future) projects. We conclude that progress in voluntary actions in regard to assessing cumulative impacts has only led to cosmetic improvements in CEA performance. We therefore argue for stronger regulatory role of government and recognition of the right of indigenous communities to lead or co-manage impact assessments on their own lands.

The politics of planning: assessing the impacts of mining on Sami lands

This article examines the implications of undertaking community-based impact assessment (CBIA) in the Swedish context where Indigenous rights receive little recognition and the institutional planning environment is disenabling. It explores how normative biases built into the permitting process for mines ontologically privilege non-Indigenous ways of defining what constitutes relevant impacts. We show how the CBIA, undertaken by an impacted Sami community together with the authors, attempted to challenge these biases by constructing narratives about future impacts from the perspective of the Indigenous community. We also discuss how the research itself became embroiled in contestations over what constituted legitimate knowledge.

Incorporating Traditional Knowledge in Environmental Impact Assessment – How Can It Be Done?

An obligation to consider traditional knowledge (TK) in planning, resource, and land management, particularly in Sami areas, has been formalized through the Nature Diversity Act. However, current Norwegian legislation and guidelines contain few clarifications of what TK is, how to approach it, or how to appropriately include such data in assessment and planning processes. The Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research has incorporated TK about land and resource use in several impact assessments (IAs), building on a methodological approach applied for a number of review assignments for the Finnmark Commission. While the experiences from reviews for the Commission and IAs concerning Sami land and resource use may represent a step towards incorporating TK in Norwegian planning processes, the approach to documentation, methodology, and ethics in this field is open for debate. The same can be said of the formal frameworks for IA and the willingness to incorporate TK in planning programs, in general.(Published: 6 November 2015)Citation: E. Eyþo´rsson & A.E. Thuestad. ‘‘Incorporating Traditional Knowledge in Environmental Impact Assessment – How Can It Be Done?.’’ Arctic Review on Law and Politics, Vol. 6, No. 2, 2015, pp. 132–150. http://dx.doi.org/10.17585/arctic.v6.101

Legal Questions Regarding Mineral Exploration and Exploitation in Indigenous Areas

This article deals with some legal issues associated with natural resource extraction affecting indigenous peoples. My contribution begins with a brief description of the current interest of the topic. In this part I will look into some trends and major challenges with mining activities in indigenous areas. The examples will mainly be from a Norwegian Sami perspective. The second part of the article discusses the existing international legal framework and standards applicable to mineral extraction on indigenous peoples’ lands. The third and final part of the article draws attention to the present situation of the Sami people in Norway when it comes to mineral exploitation on Sami lands.

The Swedish Policies on the Sami People in Sweden

This study is about sami people in swede and the Swedish policy on the sami people. The Sami people are indigenous people of the arctic who are the political borders of Sweden, Norway, Finland and Russia cut their traditional territory today. The Sami traditional homeland- the territory they occupied thousands of years before the Nordic states came into being and colonized the north is called 'Sapmi'(Sami land). The Sami’s predecessors came to northern Scandinavia after the Ice Age 4 and lived as small communities of 20-30 people moving between hunting and fishing ground depending on the season, and with time moved from the coast land towards the Finland. The primary hunted animals were reindeer, moose and bear.

The Battlefield of The Mountain: Exploring the Conflict of Tourism Development on the Three Peaks in Idre, Sweden

This paper explores the conflict between a Swedish Sami community and a local tourism company eager to exploit traditional Sami land. The aim of the paper is to illustrate the Sami approach and how they negotiated during a conflict concerning the planning process of a large scale tourism development. Three research questions frame the study. How did the stakeholders involved in the conflict communicate and mediate? How were the various objectives prioritized? What is the major contribution this conflict can offer future conflicts? Published text was analysed as a way to map out the conflict and demonstrate how such conflicts are currently managed. Specifically, newspaper articles, letters to editors and authoritative documents were reviewed. A text analysis was employed to scrutinize the published text. Furthermore, the researchers carried out a critical discourse analysis for the purpose of analysing the published and empirical data. Key findings of this study indicate that there is a strong hierarchal order among the different interests of land use. Furthermore, traditional claims to the land are not always considered as superior to economically driven plans. Instead, objectives consolidated by the state government are an important factor in such types of conflicts.

Reindeer management during the colonization of Sami lands: A long-term perspective of vulnerability and adaptation strategies

Reindeer husbandry's strong connection to the land, together with the ongoing climate-change debate, has generated growing interest in its socio-ecological resilience and vulnerability. The ability of indigenous societies and their activities to respond to change is widely recognized to be dependent on several factors, such as socioeconomic forces and aspects of governance, all of which have long historical backgrounds. However, although historians constantly address questions about human societies, there have been very few historical studies on their resilience, vulnerability and adaptation strategies. Here, using historical sources, we analyze the vulnerability of reindeer husbandry (and the Sami societies that depended on it) in Sweden during the 19th century. We demonstrate that although reindeer management was a much more diverse enterprise at that time than it is now, the major adaptation strategy and constraining forces were similar to those of today. The foremost adaptation strategy was, and still is, the flexible use of pasture area, and the clearest constraints during the 19th century were the loss of authority over the land and the imposed regulation of reindeer management–both of which were strongly connected to the process of colonization. Terminology Throughout this paper we use the terms reindeer management and reindeer pastoralism interchangeably. Sami reindeer pastoralism has been described as a complex system with two different aspects of management: herding and husbandry. Husbandry has been defined as the accumulations of profit whereas herding has been defined as the control of the animals in the terrain ( Paine, 1970, p. 53). In a Swedish context husbandry questions concerning slaughter and castration of reindeer were discussed within the household and herding matters were resolved jointly within the traditional working community Siida. The Siida consisted of households working together on traditional pasturelands and these constellations were grouped together into administrative reindeer pasture districts (Sami villages) ( Ingold, 1978; Fellman, 1910; Beach, 1981).

Quantifying Sami Settlement and Movement Patterns in Northern Sweden 1700–1900

The indigenous Sami people of northernmost Europe have developed unique adaptations that enable them to cope with harsh climate and subsist in low-productivity ecosystems. These adaptations have been shaped by both internal factors, such as demographic and traditional land-use systems, and external factors, such as colonization and national legislation. In this paper we interpret the quantitative impacts of land use by reindeer herders in a subarctic forest landscape in northern Sweden during the 18th and 19th centuries. We used archival sources (cameral and judicial documents and church records) together with environmental data to reconstruct past changes in population size and the spatial configuration of traditional Sami lands, which the Swedish state accepted and recognized as taxation units for several centuries up to the 19th century. The taxation lands encompassed several hundred square kilometres and featured distinct proportions of different vegetation types. We propose that these taxation lands were originally established so that each provided sufficient resources to support the subsistence of a Sami family, incorporating pastures for small-scale reindeer herding and opportunities for hunting and fishing within its borders. However, there were substantial differences in the resources they provided. Estimates of population density indicate that they may have been able to support 0.04–0.06 persons per km2. Unlike many other indigenous groups around the globe, the Sami interacted with the state and claimed their rights in court proceedings and were thus able to maintain strong recognition of their land tenure by the Swedish state until the late 19th century.Key words: northern Sweden, forest history, archaeology, archival sources, Sami, population changes, reindeer pastoralism, taxation lands, mountain birch, Scots pine

The Last European Landscape to be Colonised: A Case Study of Land-Use Change in the Far North of Sweden 1850-1930

Abstract The agricultural colonisation of the interior of northern Sweden in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries can be regarded as Europe's last colonising venture supported by an economy based on self-sufficiency. Nevertheless, nomadic Sami people have practised basic economic approaches to resources and environment in this region for thousands of years. The aim of this study was to analyse the swift land-use transition, from nomadic to agricultural, in the last colonised landscape of northern Sweden. Using historical documents and maps together with modern maps and a field survey, we wanted to link land-use patterns as strongly as possible to landscape features and ecosystems. Resource use of farmers and the native Samis showed many similarities with some important exceptions. Some obvious disparities seem to have evolved, mainly connected to the animal species that were domesticated. With the Sami people involved and interfering with the colonisation process, their use of resources contributed significantly to local economy and land use therefore became intensified. Interestingly, in the studied area the main driving force for establishment of new settlements was commercial forestry. However, in the last colonised landscape, forestry reached its physical limits, leaving mountain birch forests with evidence of traditional Sami land use and Sami historical traces.

'The Finn line' - a historical curiosity or a juridicial rality? The Sami reindeer herders' land rights in southern Sami areas evaluated from land consolidation practice (In Norwegian with Summary in English)

Attitudes towards the land rights of Sami reindeer herders have changed considerably during the last 100 years. So, too, has consideration of how such rights should be treated by Land Consolidation Courts. This paper reviews changes in attitudes to the Sami land rights with respect to how these are considered in Land Con¬solidation Courts in southern Sami areas in Norway. The review also considers changing attitudes regarding the competence of Land Consolidation Courts to deal with such matters. There were several cases in the 20th Century in which Land Consolidation Courts treated Sami land rights in a restricted and unfortunate manner. Legal practice, however, was not always like that, evidenced by the so-called 'Finn line' (Norwegian: 'finnelinja' -'Finn' is an archaic name for Sami). This boundary was established during a land consolidation case in 1873 and was confirmed in 1883. At that time, Sami land rights were evidently accepted as appurtenant right in privately owned mountain pasture and the Sami were treated in the same way as others who enjoyed rights of usufruct on it. The regulation of 1883 included rules governing compensation for grazing damage on farming land. In particular, responsibility for grazing damage was divided between owners and the reindeer herders, providing these looked after their animals properly, 'The Finn line' subsequently achieved wider importance. The case of 1873¬1883 has been referred to several times as a valuable and valid precedent for a way in which to organize grazing conflicts in other Sami areas. It was used in 1964 as evidence of the special rights of Sami reindeer people in the Brekken common land case. The Sami won this case in 1968 and, in its judgement, the Norwegian Supreme Court of Justice emphasised the importance of the line (Rt. 1968, p. 394). Although, owing to changes in land use practices, the 'Finn line' no longer has any practical significance, its juridical significance remains because it settles the principle that the rights of Sami reindeer herders' have to be considered in the same way as the rights of farming land owners. The ruling of 1873-1883 makes it clear that reindeer herders stand to gain important concessions, with respect to access to pasture, in land consolidation cases. The degradation of Sami land rights from the end of the 19th Century was a consequence of political manipulation and had no basis in law. Attitudes have now changed and, consequently, there is a need to revise recent legislation, such as the 1978 Reindeer Husbandry Act with regard to rules for compensation for grazing damage on farming land, and the 1979 Land Consolidation Act concerning rules of land use.